1. Lack of stardust

A Liverpool team with Dirk Kuyt and Ryan Babel up front. A Wayne Rooney-less Manchester United. Darren Bent and Kenwyne Jones of Sunderland as the country's current stand-out attacking spearhead. Are these the first real inklings that the lack of rejuvenating transfer activity in the Premier League is beginning to tell? Because suddenly the stage does feel a bit small at times.

Where are the thrusting new-season drafts to replace the major-player drift of the last four years? It's not just the fact that Dennis Bergkamp, Cristiano Ronaldo, Thierry Henry and Ruud van Nistelrooy are no longer doing unexpected things on the pitch: there's also a personality shortfall. Where's our Alan Shearer, Roy Keane or Patrick Vieira? Emmanuel Adebayor seems a little over-promoted as incumbent Premier League bad-boy.

For more tangible evidence just look at Uefa's 30-man shortlist for European player of the year, announced yesterday. Ten Premier League players make it, at least half of them old, familiar faces. In terms of youthful (ish) stardust it's Andrey Arshavin, Cesc Fábregas, Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres up against La Liga's Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi.

2. Back to the future

Not so long ago 4-4-2 was dead. Long live 4-3-2-1. Viva 4-1-3-1-1. Not to mention 4-5-1, 3-5-2 and 4-3-3. It seemed so 1990s, 4-4-2, so Arrigo Sacchi, so Blackburn winning the league in 1995. There was even cautious talk of the death of the striker. All very well – but suddenly it's back. Of 18 Premier League teams in action this weekend, 11 lined up in variations on standard 4-4-2, the most extreme probably Chelsea's "diamond" midfield (still essentially four midfielders behind a front two). Forwards are back in fashion. Which might be one – albeit perhaps a little too simple – explanation for the relative glut of goals so far this season.

3. Ryan Shawcross

His Stoke City manager, Tony Pulis, thinks he should go to the World Cup, and on Saturday he showed why, handling an initially eye-catching Carlton Cole with some ease (including one superb block with the score at 1-1) and looking strong, mobile and alert. At least, he looked a lot more comfortable than West Ham's Matthew Upson, who received some rough treatment from James Beattie and Ricardo Fuller. Room for one more on the late-run-to-the-squad bandwagon?

4. Set pieces

Only Liverpool have conceded more goals from set pieces than Chelsea this season. Liverpool have struggled with both the theory and practice of marking people at dead balls. Chelsea have two problems: Ricardo Carvalho looks a shadow of the player he was and Petr Cech has a kind of compulsive wander-and-flap reflex whenever the ball is punted into his area. But at least Chelsea can always go out in January and buy ... ah.

5. The beach ball

A new entry in the footballing lexicon – and one at which it's impossible not to smirk. Pepe Reina can expect to be bombarded with friendly inflatables when Manchester United fans visit Anfield on Sunday. A Sunderland-based entrepreneur will produce a best-selling commemorative version. But still, like most things in football, at the end of the day deflected beach-ball-on-the-pitch goals do tend to even themselves out over the course of the season.